ID Soni
Christmas celebrates the birth of Jesus. The word mas in “Christmas” means “spiritual festival”. Christmas is a scared festival, a spiritual festival, because it celebrates the birth of Sri Isa. He loved the little ones, “Suffer little children come unto me”! He said. And placing his hand upon the head of a child, Jesus said, “Of such is the kingdom of Heaven”. And children celebrate X’mas in Rome with beautiful enthusiasm. They celebrate the sacred day with lights and sweets, with flowers and festoons. Something more they do. The children give in charity! Christmas is a call to serve the poor. Christ loved the little ones, and he loved and served the poor.
Round this child, Jesus, many legends have grown. But there is not only a truth of history; there is, also a truth of poetry. The former is concerned with facts and latter with ideas and ideals. Therefore, one may well study even the legends which have grown round the sacred name of Jesus. We may see their inner significance. As a person grows greater and greater, he becomes legendary. Many stories have grown round Sri Isa’s sacred name. Some of these stories cannot be historically established; yet they have poetic and spiritual value.
The tradition that Jesus was born in an outhouse – a stable to which animals strayed is not historical, it signifies Jesus’s sense of kinship with the lower animals.
Jesus, we read, was born in Bethlehem. This name is significant. It means “House of Bread”. Disciples of Jesus loved to call him the “Bread of life”.
Two of the beautiful stories concerning child Isa are (1) the coming of shepherds to pay him reverence, and (2) the bringing of gifts of gold, myrrh, frankincense by three wise men of the East to infant Jesus. The former legend indicates that poor simple men, the shepherds, were the first to get the news of the birth of Sri Isa. The poor infant spirit hear the message of the Lord. They feel the need of spiritual life. Religion is for those who feel the need not for the self-satisfied.
In the second legend, gold stands for wisdom or intuition, myrrh for faith, and frankincense for aspiration. And these three we must place at the feet of the Lord. So may our lives be spiritualised and sanctified.
Here are some of the recorded sayings of Jesus:-
” The kingdom of heaven is within you.
” Go and sell all thou hast and give to the poor and take up thy cross and follow Me!
” The kingdom of Heaven is like unto a treasure hid in a field where when a man hath found, he sclleth all that he hath and buyeth that field.
” Except ye be born again, ye cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven!
” Do unto others as you would have others do unto you.
” Wherever there are two they are not without God, and wherever there is one alone, I say, I am with him.
” Raise the stone and there thou shalt find me; cleave wood and there am I.
The sayings are at once simple and profound. They reveal an artist and a thinker. A Rishi who saw the Universe with the eyes of the poet and the soul of a seer. Jesus was a man of cosmic consciousness. What a figure of undimmed beauty! He is radiant in the Buddha. He shineth in Krishna. The dearest name of Krishna was “DaridraNarayana”, the “lover of the poor”. And Jesus dearly loved to be called “O poor one”! To his disciples Jesus said: “Love the poor if you will love me truly”.
One day, Jesus struck the ground and picked up dust. And, behold! In one of his hands, appeared gold and in the other clay. Then, turning to his disciples, he asked: “which of the two is sweeter to your hearts”? And they said : “Gold” But Jesus said: “Both are alike to me”!
A rare spirit in history; his life was love and his crown was meekness. He claimed to be not a “leader” but a “servant”. He taught that the kingdom of God cometh by love and lowliness of mind. In this kingdom of the spirit are not the worshipers of wealth, not the proud of power, not the lover of tumults and shouts, but the poor in spirit, the meek and humble, the cross-bearers who through renunciation and suffering attain the new life.
“And who”, they asked him, “is the nearest of God”? And he said, “He whose silence is meditation, whose speech is ever about God and the Saints and whose look is a tear”.
“By what sign”, they asked him, “May we know that we are from you”? He said, “This one only sign that ye love one another”. And, one day, they asked him: “who among men is truly wise”? And he said, “Not he who talks wisely but he who acts wisely”.
He spoke not much. He was a picture of silence. But whenever he opened his lips to speak, his one word was. “Give! Give!” On one occasion, he said to his disciples: If ever you send away a beggar empty from your house, the angels will not visit your house again for seven days”.
“I have nothing at night”, he said on another occasion, “and I have nothing in the morning. Yet there is none on earth richer than I”! A great English writer, Charles Kingsley, summed up the life of Jesus in a few simple words: “Jesus, the poor man who died for poormen”!
He poured love of his heart on the poor. In them he beheld the beauty of God and exclaimed: “The whole world is full of God”! In them he beheld the deep humility of God. The soul of the East responds to him, but the big organisations of Asia know him not, yet, he brought with him a message which is the urgent need alike of Asia and the West. He brought with himself the message of life, the spirit. He said, “I am come that ye might have life and ye might have it more abundantly”.
This life is the life Divine. You will find it if you get right at the centre. Nations have moved on the circumference and so wandered in quest of power, possessions, gold and greatness. The nations continue to wander from darkness to darkness: and the pages of history are stained with dark deeds – deeds of violence – committed in the name of country and creed. Get right at the centre – taught Jesus. For deep in the centre of your being is a Divine self, a Ray of the Eternal Light of God. We see Him coming down from the heights and wiping the poor men’s perspiration from their brows. In little acts of kindness, in little deeds of love, in the seemingly “Unspiritual” things, the common duties of life, we receive His benedictions. And when we ask Him, “How may we bear witness to Thee in daily life”? We hear Him saying, “Serve the poor with tears in your eyes”.
The word “Isa” is the name which Jesus is known in Eastern lands, the word is fragrant with sweet and sacred associations. The Gospal records say so little about the early period of the life of Jesus. We see him “suddenly” emerge as a teacher at about the age of 30. What did he do all these years? The Christian books tell us so little. One may well believe Jesus travelled to Asian lands and came in touch with Buddhist and Hindu influences. His teachings, his parables, his wonderful sayings recall the wisdom of Sri Krishna and the Buddha and the Rishis. And we love to think of him as “the great and just Isa”, to quote from an Eastern record, “in whom dwelt the soul of the universe”. Did he come in contact with Indian Yogisand Rishis? His own life reveals Jesus as a Yogi. His “miracles” of healing show his yogic knowledge of the hidden forces of nature. His teaching, “I and my Father are one”, “Ye are Gods”, “Be ye perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect”, shocked the Jews. The teaching was not Jewish but essentially Indian, not Semitic but Aryan. Did Jesus move in an atmosphere of the Essenes? They owed not a little to the inspiration of Hindu – Buddhist ideals. The Essenes observed the triple vow of poverty, vegetarianism and the simple life. And they had the Aryan reverence for light. Jesus, born a Jew, really belongs to Indian group of Krishna and Buddha. The three are brothers in the kingdom of spirit.
He is to us a living reality. “Despised and rejected of men”, and crucified still by our civilisation”, he is today enthroned in the hearts of many in East and West. Goethe, the German poet, speaks of “the splendour of a sublimity proceeding from the person of Jesus of so divine a kind as only the Divinecould have manifested in earth”. Emerson, the American Seer says, “The name of Jesus is not so much written as ploughed into the history of world. Jesus belongs to the race of prophets. He saw with open eyes the mystery of soul”. Napoleon’s testimony is also, impressive, “Jesus was more than a man. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, myself and many others founded empires; but upon what did the creations of our genius depend? Upon force, Jesus alone founded his empire on love, and to this very day millions would die for him”, Silent, sacrificial love was incarnated in Isa. This love became flesh and blood in that Divine Life, and moved amongst men. Alas! The world today is become a scene of hate and strife. Yet sure as the sun rises in the East, Love will triumph: for hate destroys: but life creative is love: and Love is the Light of the Ages.
He was a great Teacher of Wisdom and his wisdom is related to action or life. He was a Teacher of “Righteousness”and of the inner life. His words once heard are not easily forgotten, they linger in the heart. Profound truths he spake in parables. Changed with beauty and illumination, they are still remembered, still recited, in Churches. When Jesus said, Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God”, he spake a truth which came from the eternal Heart of the Universe. Jesus was a great healer. He healed by touch and by word of mouth and by the wondrous gaze of his pure, compassionate eyes. Wonderful beyond the reach of the senses and the mind are the “sayings” of Christ.
Jesus said, “He that loveth his life shall lose it! And he that is not attached to his life shall keep it unto life Eternal.
He was a “Yogi” in the real sense as he affirms a profound spiritual truth when he says that the givers of love to the poor inimitablybecome the “Treasure of Heaven”.
Happy Christmas
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